SeaBass

I don't really do much investing wise, I dabbled back in 2020-2021 when the markets were recovering from the crash but didn't really know what I was doing. I had some BTC back then back when it was valued around $11K (ugh should have kept it there) but it kept losing or staying about even and I got impatient with it and sold out of it. It was never a lot that I invested, maybe around $1000. Anyway, I had about a $500 investment in a S&P 500 index fund for about a year, VOO in Fidelity and it's made around $100. But I'm kind of interested if I should put my little investment elsewhere. I'm thinking of bumping it back up to $1000. What do you guys think would be a good place to put it? I haven't read the whole thread but just the last day or two so I'm seeing Amazon, NVIDIA, Etherium and those seem interesting to me. Curious what anybody has thoughts on. I think I prefer to just put it in one place, $1K isn't that big of a sum to try spreading it around.

I don't think that's true about Turbo at all. If you've paid attention to Turbo's posts over the years he's heavily invested in the minor league players. That goes beyond just knowing who the Brewers top prospects are. He goes to games specifically to watch those guys play. They aren't just names on paper to him. There's a deeper connection there. He's simply admitting his bias and there's a reason he has that bias.

@Jack Stern Not that this is an earth shattering error but in the quote about Haase from Pat Murphy, the hyperlink for Pat Murphy takes us to a page for a dude sporting a wicked 'stache that played for the New York Giants in the late 1800s. Our Pat Murphy is not quite that old. 😂

Jerry Reinsdorf is still the owner there. It's what the Brewers would look like if the Seligs still owned the team (Bud and Jerry were/are good friends), except probably worse since Reinsdorf does still have Chicago's market going for him.

I feel like this is a theme I revisit a lot when people talk fatalistically about sports failures. One team wins, the other loses. Very basic stuff. If the game were played on paper then they could just run computer simulations instead of actually playing the games. So there are no guarantees. It's why the games get played. It's why everyone picks the Dodgers at the beginning of the year but the Dodgers still have to play the games. Anything can happen. I don't know man, the reason for following sports is to enjoy the competition. Losing is baked into the experience.

I've been ignoring most of what you say because it's all hot air and a lot of garbage but you absolutely don't get to decide who is being a "true fan" or not. You can have your own opinion about it but to basically be calling out folks that don't agree with whatever it is that your opinion is does not give you the right to tell those people that they aren't "true fans". I certainly have my opinion about you but I'm not going to tell you how to... enjoy? being a baseball fan.

I didn't really think this season would be the one where they'd be this good. I didn't expect them to fall off like most pundits just because they lost Adames and Williams. This team was just too good last season for those two guys to precipitate a huge decline. But my excitement has been for the near future and that still holds true. This season is kind of gravy. That doesn't mean I'm dismissing the opportunity they have either, they can't just ignore the position they've put themselves in. But even if they don't make a major trade addition I think they have as good a chance as if they do. Making a trade doesn't guarantee anything, it ends up getting judged by small sample size and small samples have just as much chance of going bad (Jonathan Schoop) as they do good (CC Sabathia). I think of a guy like Eduardo Escobar back in 2021. He did fine, good even. The Brewers also didn't lose anything significant in the trade. Clear positive addition. But did he really make that much of a difference? The Brewers were 60-42 (.588) when they made the trade and went 35-25 (.583) the rest of the way. They stayed about the same. That's not a bad thing, maybe if they don't make the trade they do worse, who can say. I just think that part of the trade deadline is a little overrated. Just a little. Making moves to improve isn't wrong, it never is. I just don't know that it leads to huge shifts in the end results.

My guess, just from the short video, is that the ump didn't even notice he got hit by the ball and was hurting. The player didn't really react noticeably either it just looks like he's walking away. Something to be said for making sure the ump knows you got hurt, bend over, hop around, do something. Make sure the ump sees you need some time.

I was aware that the pool money was the big reason, I wonder if they had a budget even there? Maybe they didn't want to spend that much on the draft? I see some comments here about positional redundancy here and our farm is ranked pretty well. You can never have enough talent because they can be used as trade capital but I could see them setting a budget and feeling like trading that comp pick was a way to do that. And of course that may have zero to do with it, they needed pitching so they made the trade for Priester and this was just the cost.

I saw a lot of angst about the Brewers trading away the comp pick in the Priester deal. Wonder if that feeling has been subdued by Priester's performance and the general excitement I see with the Brewers' selections today? Did losing that pick actually hurt them? Feels like not.

This is bananas but good for Jacob. What a wild start to a career. That 12 K performance vs. the Dodgers made this even possible. With so few starts if that doesn't happen, and the timing of it happening right as rosters are being announced, I don't think he has a prayer of being selected as a replacement. Ride the wave young man! Weirdly I think this actually helps keep his innings down, pitch one inning in the ASG and sit for another week once the games start up again. He'd likely have a downtime throwing session in there anyway. Go have an immaculate inning and put the cherry on top of this hype train.

I've said it before but there is absolutely nothing positive about the thumbs down feature. Completely unnecessary, it might as well just be a middle finger.

Where's Clancy to remind us that Ryan Braun played out of position for most of his career?

You're absolutely right and I'd wager nearly 100% of the posters here that read it saw right through it. I had a headache for two entire days with how hard my eyes rolled after reading it.

I do think it would give them pause. MA and Stearns later talked about the timing of the Hader trade and how they learned from it, Arnold certainly would have been part of that too he just wasn't "the guy" yet. Maybe that was just talk to appease the media/fans but I felt there was truth to it. That trade didn't bother me then and it certainly doesn't bother me now. But I do understand the clubhouse effect it caused. Doesn't mean that they wouldn't still pull the trigger on a trade like that but they'd think about it for sure.

Why WAR matters as a statistic as explained (perhaps poorly) by a non-stat head. First it should be stated that the overall view of WAR as a stat, as far as I've come to understand it, is it's not to be used as a be-all, end-all in statistics. It's useful as a measure, but I don't think most people would enter into an argument or discussion and just slap down a WAR stat and declare victory. I don't think that voters for MVP simply look at WAR and cast their vote, nor should they. I'm not great at math (in fact, I'm terrible) so generally, advanced metrics look like a different language to me. However, OPS and OPS+ do make sense and a lot of times that's kind of good enough for a baseball fan to elevate their understanding of value when compared to a more passive baseball fan that doesn't look much past the basic stats. Let's look at two players, super stars of the game today. Stats are through games on July 8, 2025. Juan Soto .269 AVG, 66 R, 21 HR, 52 RBI, 10 SB Elly De La Cruz .275 AVG, 68 R, 18 HR, 60 RBI, 22 SB Which has more value? Old school numbers are fairly even, maybe offering a slight edge towards Elly. Both are over 6 feet tall (yay?). I chose these two guys because in my fantasy baseball league I had to choose between them with my 1st round pick, which was #6 overall. Ohtani, Witt, Judge, Ramirez, Skenes were the top 5 picks. So it's been a point of interest for me as the season has progressed. I ended up picking Soto which was somewhat of a gamble with him switching teams and not having Aaron Judge protecting him in the lineup anymore. Elly went with the #7 pick. Keep in mind, in rotisserie fantasy baseball steals are a pretty important category and getting a star player with power that can steal 60 bases is super attractive. I think a lot of people would have taken Elly at #6. I had one big reason to choose Soto (which I mention later but if you know, you know). For a while I regretted that choice as Soto indeed got off to a slow start with only 3 HR by the end of April, while Elly got off to a hot start. (Ahh, remember the torpedo bat hype? Good times.) Now it's looking more even, at least in fantasy terms. Even so, fantasy baseball does not factor in defense, which is factored into WAR. Right off the bat Elly as a SS would suggest a value bump but Elly is maybe slightly above average as a defender at his position since there are so many excellent defensive shortstops. Soto is squarely below average at his position. The stolen bases are also an advantage though Elly is not on the same 60 steal pace from last season. Soto's career high is 12. Of course, most people here see that OBP was left off the stats above. OBP is such an important stat that its omission is glaring. This is why batting average has become nearly useless in today's game, it's just such a poor stat to make any kind of evaluation with on its own. It is important but only when compared and contrasted with other stats like OBP and SLG. Soto outclasses Elly because he draws a prodigious number of walks. He's lead all of MLB in walks 3 of the last 4 seasons and is currently leading MLB in walks with 72 which brings him to a .399 OBP, which would actually be a career low OBP if the season ended before games played today. Our fantasy league uses OBP rather than AVG as a rotisserie stat and that's the big reason I chose Soto. It's bonkers how quickly most players group into an OBP that is .330 or lower. Soto is a guy that you can bank on being .400 minimum. Elly isn't quite on Soto's level but he's not terrible by any means, he has a .348 OBP which is a nice improvement on his previous two seasons. (I dream of Jackson Chourio being at a .348 OBP. Someday...) Add in slugging and Soto pulls away more. Soto's slash: .269/.399/.509 for a .908 OPS Elly's slash: .275/.348/.482 for an .829 OPS (There's some rounding going on in there.) End result: Soto 3.8 bWAR / 2.6 fWAR Elly 3.1 bWAR / 2.1 fWAR These guys are really good players with similar appearing basic stats but just simply looking at OBP and SLG helps define the difference between them. And there's more baked into WAR than that but to me it's kind of easy to see why Soto just feels like he's better even when their production looks similar. It wouldn't, however, shock me if someone were able to put together an argument for Elly despite this. For those interested I'm in 3rd place in my league currently. The guy in first place is in a runaway position but the next three teams including mine are pretty close in the running for 2nd. It's a H2H using rotisserie categories so each week you can add a possible 10 wins to your record using the 5x5 rotisserie stats. Last season I won the championship despite being the 5th seed in the playoffs. I had to beat the #4, #1 and #2 seeds to win.

With as close as the Cubs, Brewers and Cards are in the standings I'll take a split series between the Cubs and Cards all day long (or 4 days long I guess). Brewers just gotta keep on winning.

A Willson Contreras HBP is one of my favorite things as a baseball fan. Can't happen often enough.

I am so tired already of people commenting, just on the internet in general, about Misiorowski eventually getting hurt when they're clearly talking about his arm. As far as I've seen his near misses with injury have been when he rolled his ankle on the mound in his debut and yesterday in the first inning where his landing foot slipped a little and it looked like his knee hyperextended a tad bit. I'm just rooting for the guy to keep standing upright at this point.

I think it's pretty hard to justify a rookie with about a month of service time being awarded an all star spot. Which is what Misiorowski will be at when July 15 rolls around. Last season Skenes was called up in early May. That made it easier to award him a spot with how much he dominated. Misiorowski just made his debut June 12th. MLB has been here time and time again with rookies making incredible debuts in a short time and more often than not they don't make it. Yasiel Puig and Elly De La Cruz had a ton of hype behind them and didn't make it despite a lot of national talk about how they should. And those guys played every day unlike a starting pitcher. Puig ended up only making one career appearance in the ASG, De La Cruz looks like he'll be an annual participant for the near future at least. I'm ok with Misiorowski just being a rookie this season, I don't think he needs an all star game appearance to validate anything. Next year is soon enough.

Imagine the Twins giving up on Byron Buxton because he's hurt all the time... Not saying Mitchell is as good as him but he's still a good player. You can deal with injuries to players that have a positive performance when they're healthy. He's not a starting pitcher that you're relying on to be your ace. The team can cover for him while he's out and make room for him when he's healthy. It's not that difficult.

I didn't see the game live but I watched the YouTube highlights and they spent a good amount of time on the "bat drama". I thought it was a little over the top to kick the guy out and was glad when he returned but I do see the side of the Cubs not wanting fans to put themselves at risk of injury for climbing the net. I agree also that it was cool that Sal gave the guy a bat. I thought while watching the highlights that it was something Sal would do and it's cool to hear that he did. Ok, I'm back to hating all things Cubs again. I blacked out there for a moment. 😂

I don't have an issue with you wanting to explore upgrades at SS. I just don't view Edwards as a realistic target. He's a good player, I'm not saying you're wrong to like him. My opinion is that the price to trade for Edwards right now would make the Brewers choose to wait for Made or Pratt instead.

Sure but back to my first point, the Marlins aren't very likely to trade the guy unless it's part of a big deal. Marlins are a last place team, they don't need to push for the playoffs. Edwards doesn't hit arbitration until 2027, he's is exactly the type of guy the Marlins want to hold on to. Let's say they think about trading him with a year of control left. That's what, 2029? There's your 3 or 4 years. Like I said, they could just wait for Made or Pratt. Or he's part of a trade package to get a front of the rotation type starter.